Thinking through solidarity organizing, with an eye to how we can better live the change, as well as how we often slip in to colonial patterns when working together across distance and difference. Written from the perspective of a long time US and now Canada based international solidarity activist turned political geographer.

May 2, 2014

... and I'm back!

The blog has been quiet because I've been on the road for a month, between conferences and an international interview tour. Still getting my feet under me, so just a quick note about feet - to say that TOMS one day without shoes event just came around again a couple of days ago. I have posted before about the TOMS shoe giveaway, and about this baring your feet in solidarity action.

Rarely does cause related marketing (a la buy a bottle of water and 10 cents will get donated to those without water) ask you to pretend to 'pretend to be the one you're with' quite like this. This year's action came with the hashtag #withoutshoes. It had a lot of photos of people's bare feet on it, and reminded me of the photos from the Colombia solidarity action a few years ago where the Movement of Victims of State Crimes asked folks to send pictures of our feet around the world to express that we were walking with them virtually from around the world on their big march against impunity and for justice. The flicker stream I linked to that post has changed since then but you can see some of the feet photos they collected at the bottom of this page. Quite a different feel to these feet photos! In comparison the TOMS photos feel even more like charity, as opposed to solidarity.